This invention relates generally to aquarium aerators, and more particularly to such aerators that are greatly superior to presently known aerators for maintaining the oxygen and carbon dioxide balances of small home aquariums at proper levels to support fish life.
It is of course well known to those familiar with standing water fish aquariums that the aquarium water must have an adequate quantity of dissolved oxygen to support fish life. It is also known that living fish give off carbon dioxide, and that the accumulation of an excessive amount of carbon dioxide in aquarium water can damage, or kill, fish exposed thereto. A common practice of aquarium owners, in this connection, is to introduce compressed air into aquarium waters for the addition of oxygen to, and the removal of carbon dioxide from, the waters, and there are many commercial "aerators" on the market for accomplishing these ends. All such aerators with which I am familiar are designed to release compressed air underwater in an aquarium, generally at the bottom of the aquarium tank, so that the air travels upwardly through the water to the surface, in the form of bubbles, aerating the body of water as it goes. The most common type of air release means used in these aerating systems, to my knowledge, comprises a porous stone through which the air permeates from an air inlet port to escape openings around the surface of the stone. When an aerator with such a stone is dispensing air to an aquarium it provides a vigorous display of fluid action but its aerating efficiency is actually quite low because the air released by the stone is in contact with the aquarium water for only a very short period of time, and the air bubbles, for the most part, are relatively large, which means that the combined area of air-water interface around the bubbles is relatively small. This, of course, makes for poor contact between the air and water and generally poor performance by the aerator. Obviously, any means that would make it possible to maintain feed air to an aquarium in contact with the aquarium water longer than the extremely short contact periods of air bubbles from conventional aerators and/or insure greater air-water interface area than these aerators permit would result in improved aerating effectiveness. No one has yet, to my knowledge, however, come up with any effective aerating means for substantially increasing the air-water contact time, air-water interface area, or both, over the contact times and interface areas obtained with presently conventional aerating equipment.